


Blood in the Water

by freesoupcoupon



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 07:34:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20792978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freesoupcoupon/pseuds/freesoupcoupon
Summary: Believing she's escaped from a life of underground, gladiatorial fighting and senseless violence, Mako finds herself involved in the Drifter's Gambit and on the path to becoming a Dredgen - a path that forces her to confront several harsh truths about those she knows, those she thinks she knows, and herself.





	1. First Time For Everything

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first time i've ever enjoyed writing a long fic
> 
> shoutout to my friend Mav, the number one Drifter fan who helped me come up with the direction for this fic. (who still owes me for beating her to Shadow <3)

****

As she waited with her team in the murky old Derelict, Mako was keeping herself occupied by her gear; tightened her gauntlets’ straps, checked that her favorite piece was loaded; sure enough, 13 in the chamber, and she was eager to use them. 

“Hey, with the jacket. Up here.” She heard the ragged looking man on the pedestal between the two teams, talking in seemingly her general direction, so under her helmet, she glanced over at him, making sure not to move her head in any noticeable amount. “Aww, come on, kid, don’t give old Drifter the silent treatment!”

Without speaking, she turned her head slightly, finally giving him the smallest hint of acknowledgement which she immediately regretted as he flashed as wry grin at her.

“Heh, I’ll take it.” He started his typical tricks with the jade coins, walking them along his fingers without even looking at them, his attention still firmly on the young Sentinel. “Nice helmet. Even nicer jacket. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were that gladiator I been hearin’ about, in all them… underground fight clubs. Hear about her? She’s like a shark, they say. Gets _ real _ bloody.”

No response.

But apparently, the man couldn’t take a hint.

“Kinda a shame though. Woulda loved to see her in a rumble, yeah? I heard she stopped fightin’ right before I came back to the Tower, and this kinda stuff might not be her style, ya dig?”

Only half-listening to him, Mako found herself staring down the four Guardians opposite her. She suddenly felt like there were far more eyes on her, even with everyone wearing a helmet or mask of some kind. She had their attention now. Something about it made her uneasy, despite being very familiar with the feeling.

She stared them right back down.

“Probably has better things to do than stand around having a staring contest in a dusty old junker ship while you play with coins” She responded plainly, sliding her helmet’s visor down while the Drifter whistled in response, taken a bit aback by her bluntness, but still grinning at her.

“Heh… Today my lucky day? You got bite, kid. Show me what you can do out there.” He chuckled, flipping up one of the coins, catching it, and checking it. “Cabal on the field! Transmat firing!”

... 

As Mako deposited her motes alongside the rest of her team, she heard something whirr to life behind her. The invasion portal - the one thing she’d been looking forward to this match, having heard about it here and there from Elise and Vlana. So, when one of her teammates, a titan, made a move towards the gateway after grabbing the heavy ammunition, Mako put a hand on her chest, firmly stopping the other titan despite being considerably smaller. They shared a glance at each other, then at the portal. The titan seemed to size her up, weighing the options before giving Mako a wordless nod, which she returned before bounding straight through the portal.

“Knock ‘em dead, little lady!” The Drifter called in her ear.

She was already running - her feet had just hit the ground and nothing had even happened, but she felt a kick of adrenaline she’d never felt before. She could see - no, maybe feel - the other team, caught deep in a wave of Red Legion, scurrying around to pick up motes and clear the area. She started off towards them, and immediately noticed the glint of a sniper scope from the far side of the arena in a ruined building. She drew her shield out and ducked behind it without stopping, but rather picking up her pace, which resulted in a few panicked shots from the sniper. 

One. Two. Three. Four. 

A beat.

He was reloading. 

Without looking, Mako brought her arm back and flung her shield in the general direction she’d seen the glint. It flew through the air, bounced around a corner with a loud metal clang, and…

“One down!”

Now, the rest of the team was converging their sights upon her. A titan armed with a nasty looking machine gun had a vantage point between some trees, a warlock had ducked into the ruined apartments with a decent sightline and a pulse rifle, and a hunter was charging her, cackling with lightning and wielding an arc staff. She came up with the plan as fast as she could.

Before the hunter was upon her, she tossed one of her void-wall grenades into the apartment, hoping to flush the warlock out into the open while she dealt with-

The hunter was upon her faster than she’d anticipated, and she was immediately struck with the annoying ass palm strike they all loved to do - usually, knocked the wind out of her and knocked her on her ass but… she barely felt anything through… was it Armor of Light? No, this wasn’t light. This was something different. 

The hunter, on the other hand, felt a lot of things (none of them pleasant), in the brief moment where they realized that their strike hadn’t moved this scrawny little titan an inch, and even more so when the titan simply scoffed in her face, brought her shield up, and cut clean through the arm they’d struck her with.

“Two down!”

The warlock had regrouped with the titan, and the two had formed a sort of firing line behind a rally barricade, starting to fire upon her. She held her bloodied shield up and started to close the distance, feeling each bullet graze the shield. She drew her hand cannon out with her free hand and started firing around the shield, and judging by the glance the last two shared briefly, they’d … never seen a Sentinel do this. 

When she was close enough, she put her hand cannon away, and watched the titan pull a desperate fist of havoc, leaping up into the air to try and slam their fists down on her. Almost purely by her acquired muscle memory, Mako instinctively threw her shield upwards at an arc, and as if perfectly calculated, the titan’s upward momentum carried his head lovingly into the path of her shield. 

“Three down!” Mako heard, followed by the gentle thump of a body in the dirt behind her.

The warlock, in a panic, started to backpedal away from Mako. Mako caught her shield and tossed it one last time at the fleeing guardian. 

_ Why did they keep trying this when she clearly knew what she was doing with her shield? _

She felt herself jolted back to her team’s side, and the next thing she heard once she had her bearings was the most excited she’d ever heard another human being in all her three years of guardian life. 

The Drifter absolutely _ screamed _in her and her teams’ ears. “DID THEY BLEED IN THAT WATER, OR SOMETHIN’?! ‘CAUSE YOU TORE THEM APART!” She rolled her eyes at the lame shark pun as she glanced around, ready to get back into the fight with her…

The other titan had just started slamming a few more motes into the bank, and Mako heard the sound of the invasion portal, opening up _ again. _The titan seemed to be ready to make use of the new invasion portal, and stopped in her tracks once she saw Mako, standing between her and the portal. “...you’re back.”

“Mhm.” Mako nodded once.

“Judging by the screaming in my ear and the enemy team’s you did good?”

“_ Mhm. _” Mako nodded twice, smirking.

The titan glanced between Mako and the portal. “You wanna… go ahead and handle that, again? They don’t have any motes, but… if they’re dead, I guess they can’t get any more, right?”

“I would…” Mako took a breath before grinning under her helmet. “_ ...love _to handle it.”

Reloading her hand cannon, she turned and threw herself right back through the portal.


	2. Payment

Mako was eventually back on the Derelict, watching the other guardians, her teammates and her enemies, trickle out one by one once they’d gotten their payment. Eventually, there were two people left on board; herself, and the Drifter, waiting by a stack of crates, wearing that same wry grin. 

She started over towards him, and he waved with one hand. “How ya livin’?” He asked, and she offered a small shrug in response. “Aw, come on, don’t sell yourself short. You’re a natural! And you’re gonna tell me that was your first time playin’ Gambit?”

She paused, taking her Helm of Saint-14 off, looking him dead in the eyes as she resumed her pace, holding the helmet under her arm. “Never played or seen it. Got friends who do, though.” His face lit up at that.

“I can dig it! Gambit seems like it’s gettin’ popular, especially if you young kids are getting in on it too.” He started to flick a jade coin between his hands, doing idle tricks with it without breaking eye contact. “Just hope you all know what you’re getting into, that’s all.” 

Mako gave another shrug. “Dunno, don’t care. I’m getting paid, so I’ll bite.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Drifter added a few more jade coins into his tricks, focusing on them for just a second. “Gambit’s some shifty business if you get too invested… but enough about that. Tell me about yourself, shark girl. You the…_ real thing?” _

“What do you mean, the real thing?” She narrowed her eyes. She had a feeling he knew more than he was letting on, and she wanted to try to gauge exactly how much he _ did _know. 

_ Just in case he ever becomes a problem. _

His expression doesn’t change, but he starts to pace. “Well, after the Red War, lotta guardians were... Confused. Displaced. And angry as all hell. So they started takin’ it out on each other - underground, no rules, no Shaxx, no nothin’. Just Guardians fighting Guardians, simple as that.”

“And how is that relevant?” Mako crossed her arms, and the Drifter snickered.

“I was gettin’ there. Drifter never tells a story for no reason.” He put a hand up. “Trust.” 

She stared at him, unmoved. 

“So word starts going around that there’s a _ shark _ in those kiddie pools. Half the size of the average titan, and twice as mean. Fights with a razor-sharp shield that can cut a man’s head clean off.” He draws two fingers across his own neck. “A crowd pleaser. A punk.” His eyes drifted down to the helmet she was carrying, and she followed his gaze, holding it closer to herself. “And an… _ enthusiastic fan _ of Saint-14.”

She sighed, bringing the helmet up and staring into its faceplate, holding it with both hands before looking back up at the Drifter, not saying anything.

“How’s _ that _for relevant?”

“Pretty good.” She put the helmet back under her arm. “So why act like you didn’t know if it was me or not?”

“I didn’t know.” He admitted pretty honestly. “Any titan can throw on a jacket, make some knock-off Saint helmet, and act like they’re a ‘man of few words.’ But… it takes a special kinda titan to lop a man’s arm clean off.”

“... I took his arm off?” She tilted her head. He nodded. “That sniper?” He nodded again. “Huh…”

He burst out laughing at that, needing a moment to recollect himself, pretending to wipe something from his eye. “Kid, you’re a hoot and a half. You plan on comin’ around more often?”

She thought about it for a minute, eventually deciding, “I guess. I got nothin’ better to do, I need to get paid, and…”

He nodded his head. “Aaaand…?”

“And, that whole invasion thing is actually pretty fun…” She admitted.

“Feels good, right?” 

“Feels _ really _good…” She nodded her head in agreement.

“That’s what I like to hear!” He started to rummage through the nearby crates, eventually pulling something out - a hand cannon, Mako guessed, and her guess was confirmed when he nodded her head at her before tossing it over. 

“What’s this?” She eyed the hand cannon - it looked like an old-fashioned six shooter, with its engraved wooden grip and … frankly outdated looking firing mechanism. Comfortable to hold though.

“Let’s call it a bonus.” He grinned. “The first of many, if you stick around. Trust.”

She nodded her head. “Yeah, okay…”

He grabbed something else, tossing it over to her. “You’re gonna need some of these too. Your friends will know what to do with ‘em.” What she caught was … what looked like one of his coins, but made in a deep red hue. She stuffed it into her pocket, nodding at him. 

“Uh… thanks. I’ll…” She huffed, trying to find the words to make this a little less awkward. “See you around, I guess.”

“Lookin’ forward to it.” He waved her away, and with that, she was gone, stuffing her hands in her jackets’ pockets, clutching the little coin she’d been given in her palm, starting to idly play with it as she left the Derelict.


End file.
